Bedtime Stories
by cmr2014
Summary: Every good little girl deserves a story before bed.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This will effectively be a collection of one-shots. Chapters will be added as they occur to me.

 **Bedtime Stories**

"Avast, ye scurvy dogs! I'll be taking that plunder now, arrrr!" Vash the Stampede growled.

The raven-haired little girl on the other side of the playset giggled. "Da, that's not how knights talk."

"Knights?" Vash blinked innocently. "I thought we were playing soldiers."

Dark bangs swayed as the girl shook her head. "Soldiers don't talk like that, either," she informed him.

"Then who does talk like that?"

"Little girls who need to go to bed, is who," stated a stern voice. Both Vash and his daughter looked up at the matriarch of the household, Meryl Saverem, nee Stryfe. "Don't give me those puppy-dog eyes, Rem needs to go to sleep. Go on now, scoot."

"Can Da take me?"

"Yeah, Meryl, can I?" Vash implored. "I'll clean up later, promise!" He held up three fingers and wore his most sincere expression.

"It's not a promise when you're crossing your other hand's fingers behind your back," Meryl said. "But fine, go put our daughter to bed. Rem, don't think I don't know you want him because you can charm him into more than one story."

Vash scooped up their daughter and carried her off to her room. Behind their backs, Meryl lost her stern expression and smiled as she watched them go.

"Let's run down the list," Vash said a little while later. "Teeth brushed?"

"Check," Rem said.

"Nightie on?'

"Check."

"Bed check done, no monsters?"

"Check."

"Tucked in?"

"Check."

"You're good to go, then. I'm off."

He made like he was going to get up and leave, and then right on cue –

"You forgot the last thing!"

Turned around with a quizzical look on his face. "I did? What could I possibly have forgotten?"

"You know what."

"I do?"

"Don't try to play dumb, mister. Get back here and give me my story!"

"I see you've been paying attention to how your mother talks." Shaking his head with a grin, Vash sat back down at his daughter's bedside. "With what tale shall I regale you tonight, m'lady?"

Rem giggled. "You're funny when you talk silly, Da. You think of something."

"Me? Well, ok, let me think. Ok, so one time –"

"No, Da, do it right!"

"Right?" He wore his innocent expression again and turned his seat ninety degrees. "How's this?"

"No, Da!" Rem pointed her finger commandingly at him, proof that she really had been learning by example from her mother. "Turn back here and do it right."

Vash turned back to her. "Can you give me a hint?"

The young girl rolled her eyes in a way that only someone born of a Stryfe could. "Like this – once upon a time…"

"Oh, like that. Ok, then – start it with me now, would you?"

Father and daughter said as one, "Once upon a time…"


	2. Chapter 2

DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

…there was a young lady named Meryl, and…

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Meryl demanded.

"Ssh!" came the voice of Vash. "You're a character, don't interrupt the flow."

"The main character of the story is always supposed to be the person you're telling the story to. Don't you know how to tell a story to a child?"

"Rem is too young to be the main character here. Besides, she likes it when you're the lead. And anyway, I'm telling the story here. Characters aren't supposed to participate."

Meryl folded her arms and snorted. "Fine, fine, but don't come crying to me when you mess up."

So anyway, there was a young lady named Meryl, whose mother was very busy. Too busy, in fact, to pay a daughterly visit to her own mother one weekend, which was her usual custom. Instead, she asked her daughter to make this visit for here. Meryl, being a good daughter, readily agreed to visit her grandmother. A picnic basket was packed with a good meal for two and some practical presents for her grandmother, and then she started to leave...

"Dear, don't forget your cape!" her mother called after her. "It's chilly this time of year!"

"I know this story!" Meryl exclaimed, grabbing the cape and tying it on. She wrapped it around herself and examined it. "But I don't know, red really isn't my color."

"Fine, then, you are now White Riding Hood," came Vash's voice again. "Happy?"

"Perfectly," Meryl said with a grin as she pulled up the hood of her now-white cape. "Off we go to Grandmother's house."

Meryl skipped happily along –

"Why am I skipping?' she asked. "I can walk much better than I can skip, and I'd get there quicker if I ran."

"Because it's _my_ story," Vash said, just a bit petulantly. "Quit interrupting."

So, Meryl skipped happily along, until at one point she met a wolf –

"Seriously?" Nicholas D. Wolfwood snapped. "You cast _me_ as the wolf? Just because my name has 'wolf' in it doesn't automatically qualify me as a big bad wolf. Dude, if anything, I'm Prince Charming."

"This story doesn't have a Prince Charming," the voice of Vash said. "And for crying out loud, the characters in this story need to just shut up and be characters."

"I notice you're a lot nicer when it's Meryl interrupting."

"She's my wife, now shut up and be a character!"

"Where are you going with that picnic – you know, actually, I do look pretty good as a wolf," Wolfwood noted, breaking the script again. "Hey, loan me some of your hair gel, I want to see what I look like with slicked-back fur."

"Good grief, even as a character you're a pain to work with!"

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, Spikey. Ok, so – where are you going with that picnic basket, little girl?"

"Call me little again," snapped Meryl, "and I'll put you down, wolf. And if you must know, I'm going to my grandmother's house."

"It's dangerous to walk in the woods alone, you know," the big bad Wolfwood pointed out.

Meryl rolled her eyes. "Look around you – we're on a desert planet! There aren't any woods!"

"Well – it's still dangerous, though. There's bandits about, like B.D.N."

"Oh, right, you only got Vash's version of that story. Well, for your information, I've held my own against B.D.N.'s crew before. I'll be just fine, thank you."

The big bad Wolfwood was about to argue the point further when a thought came to him. Why should he settle for just White Riding Hood when he could have her grandmother as well?

"If you insist on going your way, I bid you _adieu_ ," he told the young lady. And he appeared to leave her alone, going on his own way.

However, once he was out of sight, the big bad Wolfwood pulled out his smartphone and looked up directions for Grandmother's House. After a few wrong turns – "Turn right." "But this goes off a cliff, you stupid phone!" – he still made it to Grandmother's House ahead of Meryl.

Meryl's grandmother answered his knock. "I can't see very well, who is it?"

"Milly? What the devil are you doing here?!"

"I guess I'm a character, too. Who are you, are you the pudding delivery man?"

"Er – yeah, sure, we'll go with that. Pudding delivery guy, can I come in?"

"You can just leave it on the porch, thank you." She closed the door in his face.

Well, the big bad Wolfwood was having none of that. He took a deep breath, preparing to huff and puff –

"Wrong story, Spikey!"

"Look, Wolfwood," came Vash's voice again, "it's my story and –"

"No! We're doing this my way!" Wolfwood tried the knob; it turned easily, and he walked right in. "See how easy that was? Now look, Granny Milly, we've got to get this story moving along. This is all for a little kid, and this Grimm's stuff is a bit much for a kid her age, so never mind eating you. C'mon, c'mon, get in the closet already!" He yanked Meryl's grandmother from bed and shoved her in the closet, quickly grabbing a chair and propping it under the knob to ensure she couldn't escape.

"Hold on a sec, I'm still dressed like me," the big bad Wolfwood said. He knocked on the closet door.

"Yes?" came the voice from within.

"Seeing as this story is for a kid, would you be polite enough to loan me some clothes from your closet?"

"Of course I would, Mr. Big Bad Wolfwood. I may be a captive, but I can still be polite."

She loaned him some clothes, which he then dressed in and jumped into bed. Just in time, too, for there came a knock at the door.

"Who –" Wolfwood stopped, cleared his throat and bumped it up to a high pitch. "Who is it?"

"It's your granddaughter, grandmother."

"Oh? Which one?"

"You only have the one, grandmother, it's Meryl! I've brought you some food and gifts."

"Then do come in, dear."

Meryl entered and began laying out the contents of the basket. "I brought us a meal to eat – my, grandmother, how big your eyes are!"

"Got some contact lenses, so I could see you better."

"Ok. And here's some shower things, soap and toothpaste and all and – my, how big your ears are!"

"Got some hearing aids, too, the better to hear you with."

"Uh-huh – and here's some cleaning stuff for your stun gun – wow, what big teeth you have!"

The big bad Wolfwood threw off the granny outfit and prepared to leap. "All the better to – did you say stun gun?"

The closet door splintered apart and Grandmother Milly stepped through, holding her huge stun gun. "Nobody puts Milly in a corner!" she declared.

White Riding Hood, aka Meryl, looked from her real grandmother to the fake grandmother for a heartbeat. "You're that jerk wolf!" Her hands flew under her cape.

The big bad Wolfwood fled, yelping and hollering, under a storm of derringer fire and stun gun projectiles.

Shortly thereafter, the front door of the little house was chopped to bits, the tall blond woodsman with spiky hair stepping through in dramatic fashion. "There's no need to fear, the heroic woodsman…is…here?" He faltered as he failed to catch sight of a dangerous situation, instead seeing a young lady and her grandmother sharing a pleasant meal.

"If you came to take care of the wolf, you're too late," Meryl said. "We already sent him packing."

"Oh," noted Grandmother Milly as she sipped her Ceylon tea. "I'll be billing you for that front door."

As the deflated spiky-haired woodsman stood there in shock that he wasn't the hero of the story, Meryl and Milly traded high fives. "FEM POWER!"


End file.
